Flashback

It had been 3 days since I'd actually had a meal. I had been surviving on yogurt, pudding and vending machine snacks to make it through my classes. I was too weak to walk up the 3 flights of stairs to English 101 today and I knew I was in trouble.

This battle with food and taking care of myself had happened before. It grew worse each time it happened, and it went unnoticed by my family. In all fairness, they rarely saw me as it was. I went up to three months before calling my mother a few times. It was at least that long in between visits to see them. I avoided holidays with them and had been doing so for years by this time. Mom was always "busy" it seemed. I guess I came by that honestly.  I don't know what kept me going.

I wanted nothing more than to lay down and die. I could barely fall asleep though.

I was losing what little health I had and it was getting worse at home.
"You're such a disrespectful bitch!" He started yelling. "I asked you to do one thing today and you are so busy being wrapped up in your own little selfish world you can't take care of one damn thing!" I would be sitting on the couch crying as the shouting started. The "one little thing" he was talking about could be anything on any day. It could be something like washing a load of laundry to mowing the yard or sending a text to him at lunch.
Any of these was punishable by vociferating, followed by, "Get in the shower you cunt you stink." Or something similar. Weeping, I'd run to the bathroom and shed more tears as I scrubbed off imaginary filth. This shower was a preparation for being raped. I knew it and believed I had no escape.
I would take the longest, hottest shower I could stand in hopes it would numb me somehow for what was about to happen. I would put on my robe, slowly open the bathroom door, and he would be waiting for me. I would be taken by the arm and manhandled down the hall to the bedroom. I'd be thrown on the bed. Sometimes on my back, sometimes face down, depending on his mood.
If I was face up he usually said something like, "I want to see your face and watch you enjoy it." (As if that were possible.) If I was face down he would say, "I can't stand looking at you tonight, I'm doing this for you."
I would lay still and lifeless as possible. I sometimes strained or winced in pain, or shed silent tears and endured flash backs from my rapes and abuse as a child.
I hated myself for not fighting back, not protesting, not running away.
After my rapist monster got himself off, he would all but collapse his fat, sweaty body on top of mine.
He would catch his breath and make some comment like, "god you're a great fuck." I would lay in humiliation and defilement on my side so my back was facing him.

This is why I had no appetite. This is why I wanted to lay down and perish. This is why I weighed 96 lbs on a 5.4' frame. Each rape was different and yet all of them were alike.
I was sinking.

The Perfect Storm.

"You are so ugly." says the voice in my head.

The sun is shining and beams of light penetrate through the layers of curtains and shades that cover my windows. This scene playing out in the mirror of self hatred, disgust and shame looks ridiculous to those looking in. I get paid to model, walk the run way, pose for pictures and host public events because I am beautiful physically, or at least that what the agents tell me.
All I see is a skeletal frame of a starving woman's body with a frightened little girl trapped in her eyes.

I hear my phone buzzing on top of my vanity. It's a text and my already tired and wounded soul takes another hit and shudders. It's him. He wants to know what I am doing... what time is my next class and when I will be home. I respond with the wanted facts and then he texts me again "wuts wrong? wheres my girl today?" my heart sinks and that stupid knot of torture forms in my throat. This is a subtle manipulative text that I must respond to with enthusiasm and some form of happiness no matter how fake. "I'm here handsome just gettin ready for class. don't wanna b late" I hate myself a little more now for speaking this way but, I know if I don't the consequences will be hell to pay.

How did I get here? I am trapped in a house with a rapist, a cousin rapist no less.
Why don't I run? Where the hell is my sense of self preservation? These are questions - that at time of this real life scene in front of my looking glass is taking place,- I am not even mentally capable of having on my own.

I am sleep and nutrition deprived. All my actions and reactions to any and everything are fueled by fear, shame and manipulation by my rapist. I don't see a pretty run way model with a perfect body. I see a skeletal frame covered in scared skin and sunken eye. If it weren't for my eyes and something in them begging for hope... I'd look dead. I look all but dead today.

Oh how nice it would be to lay down on this bed and put my head on a pillow and never wake up again. I think to myself. I am to cowardly to take my own life but, there will be nights I spend begging God to have mercy and take me away, and He won't.

This how I ended up here.
I had just lost my grandfather a few months prior to this day. I wanted a change in my life from a dead end job to a career and education. I also had a fiance and wanted to be closer to him and his college. I needed to move to the big city, away from my small town rural life.
This man, my cousin a 59 year old divorced man offered me a place to "crash." Encouraged by my own parents I took him up on his offer. I had tentatively planned on working and going to school and at some point getting my own place hopefully with my fiance... my soon to be husband...who never had any intention of marrying me.
I trusted this man... this family member, this undercover monster.
 He groomed me, built up my trust, helped me find a job and get into college.
Then it happened, I had a miscarriage with my fiance and we broke up after I finally realized he was a liar and not ever going to marry me. I was devastated and relieved all at once.
After all the abuse as a child I never developed a sense of self worth. I knew I didn't have the strength or self love to leave my fiance for myself. It took losing an innocent life and realizing my someday children deserve a better father than that. I couldn't leave for me but, for my now dead child I would never even look back.
 It was a perfect storm for my predator cousin. He introduced me to drinking. I was a pathetic lightweight. I had only consumed 3 shots of wine before in my entire life. I had an entire beer and was passed out of the couch after crying myself to sleep.
I also had been to see my Doctor for chronic back pain from an injury sustained working on the family farm like a man. I was prescribed pain medications to take at night or when my back pain became unbearable. After my miscarriage my back pain returned with a vengeance.
Every night I fell asleep after drinking and or taking my pain medication.

Then the rapes began.

The Beginning, Surrender

I've lied, to myself and to others about how I really feel.
I've said and try to think what I'd come to understand by others standards as RIGHT.
I didn’t live by THE STANDARD though, that would be total surrender, the only time I ever did that I got burned badly.

I was just a child...less than Five, he was between Twelve and Fourteen.
The details become fuzzy to me, they aren’t exactly something I want to remember.
Yet, I find myself trapped and haunted by the things that won’t leave my mind.
A dimly lit room, a door with a bad lock, various action figures popular in the late 80’s.
There is a flash light, a towel and different “tools” as if I were an experiment for a mad scientist or alien invasion.

It’s starts with coaxing, maybe a bribe of candy or just threats of inflicting pain, if I do not cooperate. All I know is I want approval and I don’t want to hurt.
So I lay down, I watch the door, I cover my mouth and I surrender.
I always had to go “pittle” before the “experiments” got to in depth.
I remember one time being forced to sip his own urine.
Bruises and “owies” were always apart of this process.
Irreversible damage was done that I would not realize until much later in life.
These episodes lasted anywhere from Ten minutes to Forty-Five.
Sometimes they were interrupted by oblivious parties who were one track minded and on a mission to get something and leave again.
Other times threats were passed out with a proof slugging on the arm or leg to the other party.

Sometimes it didn’t hurt, it just felt funny...I can remember on several occasions a painful burning sensation and soreness for several days following.
These episodes happened every several weeks sometimes more frequent sometimes less.
I never told anybody, I had promised my “invader” silence in exchange for his approval and bribes. Some times it felt good, I remember this new sensation that seems to tingle the core of my body... and I hated that about myself. Was I a monster for liking any part of what was happening to me? At 5 years old I did not understand the DEPTH of damage being done to me, emotionally and physically. I hated this new longing in my body for something I did not understand and felt gross about myself for even wanting. I imagine this must be how a porn or drug addict must feel about them self for wanting their addiction no matter how disgusting.
I surrendered my voice, my body, my pain and innocence for such a small unworthy prize.
At my age it was all I knew and all I wanted. I learned I could have ANYTHING I wanted for a price. This "invader" rapist and molester was my half brother.

As I got older it made sense to me that if it cost so much for such a prize, how horrific must the cost be for real love and acceptance.
What I didn’t understand was, that God my savior had already paid that most tragic price for me with His son so I could have REAL love.

I spent my childhood acting out and did what ever it took to get what I wanted.
Screaming, crying, wetting the bed, anything to wear down my parents and get what I wanted.
My brothers called me the brat of the family... and unfortunately I held that title with royal gusto.
My father and I never had much of a relationship. How could we? It was nothing to him to backhand and verbally abuse me. "You disgust me" with the look of having just vomited in his own mouth on his face will forever be etched in my mind. I believed he didn’t love me and there was no point in trying to understand him or his ridiculous rules. I believed if he did love me it was only because he had too. I couldn’t believe my father loved me for who I was, I didn’t even love me for who I was.
My Mother and I had our spats but I learned that to get what I wanted from her I had to step in as secondary momma hen. She had too many children and too much responsibility to do it alone so I had to step in as best a child could.

Bossing became my role, I did chores that she taught me and when she had to be gone, I was in charge of teaching these chores to the other siblings and seeing to it that they got done. This was my self proclaimed job.
This took lots of practice and more fit throwing to now wear down my siblings and get what I wanted.
I had endurance in this game mastered, I sensed when someone was ready to break under my pressure.
I knew how to get them to surrender. I was the queen of manipulation.

As I got older into my early teens low self esteem hit me like a ton of bricks.
Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure I could get everything I wanted.
I wasn’t sure I liked this girl in the mirror, in fact I hated her.
I HATED how she had been so relentless in her selfish acts that her brothers now hated her. I hated how things between her and her father were so messed up and out of control. I blamed her.
I hated her awkwardness, her big freckles, her boney elbows and knobby knees.
I hated her big ears and UN-tameable mane.
I was sure there was nothing inside to even attempt to love. I hated her and it was all her fault.

Then the nightmares began...

No one knew of these things, they just knew some days I woke up in a bad mood and wrote me off as pissy or pms-ing.
Most nights I couldn’t fall asleep no matter how hard I’d worked that day.
It felt as though I had to exhaust myself with thoughts and worries before I could get any rest and then, suddenly wake up from dreams that my invader had returned.
Sometimes it scared me and sometimes it comforted me because it was all I knew.
The longing for love on such an intimate level had been awakened before it’s time and it was growing into a monster. What a shame such a pure thing as love was so dirtied by the incestuous act of an older brother.

One day about the time I was Sixteen a fellow pupil in my youth group made a comment that blew me away.
“Your boobs are awesome.”
What do I do with that, I wondered?
Part of me felt empowered I now had something that made me “beautiful” in every sense in which I understood this word.
Part of me was scared to death... what if they attract another invader?
What if my nightmares become reality again?
In the end I decided I had lived through it once and I could do it again if I had to.
This time though I had more things to worry about, things like getting pregnant or an S.T.D.
My knowledge on these things was limited, I was given just enough information to fear them and to fear the penis.

I managed to make it almost to 19 before I had sex and it was, as it is for most...not what I expected. It wasn’t exactly romantic, we were exhausted with rumors in our home church that we were having sex already in the CHURCH parking lot. So in a less than brilliant moment we decided an old barn with raging hormones would be just fine.
It didn’t full fill anything, it even borderline freaked me out.
The intimacy all around the actual act of sex was something I had never known before and it was the only thing that kept me coming back.
I didn’t know anything about sex except that my male counterpart was willing to do all the work and get himself off if I would just surrender.
My lover knew hands below my waist were not allowed and I had to see his face the entire time or it might otherwise turn out disastrous. If I started having a flash back I usually just laid there and my eyes would glaze over while mentally I was fighting back and trying to find a way out.
It usually ended with me shaking and my lover thought I was just cold, he never knew otherwise.

I had done it, the forbidden act of sex outside of marriage. I didn’t care too much, I didn’t love myself and, I really didn’t think I could still be considered a virgin after my childhood. Plus, I was in love and sure that magically our lives together were going to be a happy ending to my nightmares. Could God have used me before? I didn’t believe so, I religiously played it like I could be a SUPER Christian for God, but this was not my self image. I longed for it but it didn’t magically happen so I concluded that I could justify my sin because I didn’t have a fighting chance before.

What a tragedy, I was set up for horrific failure. More rapes and incestuous sexual assault crimes were committed against me.
This was only the beginning of surrender.